As we voyage forth into another year of gradual, but steady civilizational dissolution, these are my top five tips for making the most of the dystopian spiral.
First, be grateful for the little things, like when saintly centenarian peanut farmers show up the inaugural festivities of carnival barker autocrats by taking the Capitol rotunda not by the force of a mob but by the force of deferent custom. Remember, if you cannot defeat your enemies, there are ways to make your death spectacularly inconvenient to them. Smash a bottle on the keel and let them squirm as you sail off to certain doom.
Second, only ever read the news if you have the stomach for corporal mortification and are steeled against the onslaught by it. Otherwise, with internet neutrality dissolving alongside every other consumer protection and regulation, choose literally anything else to encourage you before broadband companies start censoring or throttling services, whether it be how to carve a spoon, defend yourself with a halberd, dress game fowl, grow chanterelles (hint, the mycelium networks require the root systems of birch or beech trees), or coördinate an MitM or DNS tunneling attack on some despicable corporate enterprise, because there are only a few ways this could go, one might as well be prepared and enjoy themselves in the preparation… Spend some leisure time studying as the lounge chairs lurch, clattering down the promenade.
Third, dress as well as you can possibly afford for the Armageddon. What with tangoing with unhinged nuclear adversaries, tearing at the fabrics of every single peace-keeping settlement of the twentieth century (while entertaining the vile false equivalency that the state of affairs under them is as bad as the ≈ 230 million democides and genocides committed by that era’s despots), reviving nearly every atrocious ideology and factionalism that begat them in a gushing climax of forgetfulness, and simultaneously advancing an Amazon and Temu fueled climate crisis, you might as well have silk lapels, cotton marcella, and patent leather opera pumps on when the waters begin to rise.
Fourth, indulge a little, not enough that you lose your wits or are beset with dyspepsia, but I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, enjoy a cognac reserve, or a vénitienne, or maduro, or give up giving up bread and eat an entire loaf, sing some idiotic roundelays with abandon, have a petite mort or two, whatever, just try to fucking enjoy yourself for heaven’s sake. Ideally, with company. It’s not as if you can actually prevent the world from burning at this stage. It’s an opera, everyone dies in the final act anyway. Let the tenor and soprano at least sing us to it… as the hull wrenches open.
Fifthly, and finally, don’t concern yourself excessively with the state of the whole world and everything that’s in it, the truth is that everything that is most disordered about our common life is outside of your control, if you stare down the barrel of it too long you’ll end up either bitter and jaded — and you’ll meet your end in that state — or you’ll spend an awful lot of frivolous time advising folks to wear white tie while using snail forks and reciting the lesser works of the Second Earl of Rochester to an Italian aria’s crescendo at the eschaton — or worse, whatever lies between now and then. The sea is lovely this time of the year, nevermind the temperature.